


The Particular Affliction of Addiction and Affection

by siennna



Series: The Particular Affliction 'verse [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Love, M/M, One Shot, POV First Person, POV Sherlock Holmes, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1842772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siennna/pseuds/siennna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Logic doesn’t explain the lick of fire that travels up my spine from your gaze alone, reason doesn’t illuminate the insatiable urge to press you to different planes of the wall and kiss the breath from your lungs; cool, detached intelligence does not help me understand why my soul lifts higher at the sight of your warm smile."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Particular Affliction of Addiction and Affection

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This story has been bouncing around in my head for a while, so since I adore writing first POV (especially for Sherlock!) I decided to finish and post it. 
> 
> Enjoy :)

The first time I kissed you, I was ill.

I was not riddled with the common cold or influenza, nor was I afflicted with something cancerous and fatal. No, it was nothing so dramatic. Nothing so  _tangible_.

When I first kissed you twenty-six and a half days ago—when you were crushed against the bookcase, your back flush with encyclopedias as I ran my shaking fingers through your hair—I was irreversibly stricken with an illness that some might call dangerous and others might call bliss.

You're a romantic however, so I suppose you'd insist on calling it  _love_.

I know if you heard me say this, you'd smile. You would say "Oh,  _Sherlock,"_  and a slow building grin would take its time to engulf your face, until your eyes crinkled at the corners and your entire expression glowed with joy. You'd probably grab my hand too, squeeze it once within your warm, rough palm and give me a look that would say more than words possibly could.

You're just so wonderful, John, so brilliant and extraordinary, and you deserve someone who would embrace this sentiment with wide arms and ready lungs. Yet for some reason you've chosen me: a man too afraid to speak the word let alone accept it.

Love has always been an elusive notion, and I've avoided it as if it were the plague. It is an illness, a distortion of the mind. As a detective and scientist, I fear it greatly.

Dear doctor, of all people  _you_  should understand the danger of this affliction. If a single area of the body is infected with this deadly virus, the illness will spread and eventually eat through the muscle tissue, the skin, the bones, the blood, until the entire host is just an empty husk. Perhaps it is a tad morbid, but this is how I view the concept of 'love'. It starts in the most primitive areas—ah yes, it's a clever disease indeed—and gradually morphs itself from simple-minded lust into something softer and warmer; it crawls through one's veins like a venom and seeps itself into the mind in small, unnoticeable doses. A slow burn, indeed.

I suppose I should have seen this coming; I should have known I'd fall prey to such a sentiment. With a poet's heart and an addict's brain I was bound to grow attached to only the most luminescent of souls. Mycroft was never suitable company, Lestrade is only tolerable in small doses, Molly merely loves the idea of me, Mrs. Hudson is a maternal figure, and everyone else in my life has dubbed me "freak", or worse. It only makes sense that the moment I saw a star—oh, yes, that would be you, John; the invalidated army doctor with galaxies of courage in his veins—I'd become painfully, tragically,  _hopelessly_ addicted.

(Mycroft once asked if I'd ever return to cocaine—I was not lying to him when I said 'no'. It's far too difficult to balance two addictions, and since I do not plan on eradicating my craving for you, I suppose the drugs will have to go)

Love—it's just, it's all so trite and over sentimentalized. People have those three words engraved into rings and embellished on necklaces and inked across planes of their skin just so the rest of the world knows that they have someone who loves them. I vowed long ago never to lower myself to their plane of existence by speaking such an empty phrase.

Sometimes, though, I find myself wanting to say it to  _you_. I want to cup the sides of your face in my hands and whisper it against the swell of your bottom lip. I want to write it down the curve of your spine and the slopes of your calves in calligraphic, indelible writing that is visible to only us. I want to tap those three words in Morse code against the steady thump of your heart and punctuate each beat with a kiss.

I want to, John, but—I can't. Not yet.

It's a word that I cannot quite wrap my tongue around, because the discordance of vowels and consonants taste like poison—not surprising, the body tends to recognize unfamiliar entities as such—and I can't help but swallow it back down. I've heard the way it sounds when other people say it, bland and dull and teeming with meaninglessness, and that makes me fear how it shall sound when it passes from my own lips.

When people use it too often it becomes a silly garnish tossed at the end of phone conversations and letters for the sake of etiquette. It becomes just another social requirement, another result of that prickly, insistent urge to love and be loved. Everyone—all of them!—they throw it out there, scream it from rooftops with rings and cards and flowers and useless superficial ballads, all in hopes that one day it will echo and return to them. Humans want to be wanted, that is a simple fact.

Another simple fact:  _I_  am human and  _I_  want to be wanted.

Oh, John, I'm sure you must know how it irks me to admit something so painfully banal, but it is true, and the only thing I despise more than prosaic sentiment is denial. I want to be wanted by  _you_ , no one else.

Because there is no one else in this entire useless universe who makes me feel the way you do; no one else that smiles when anyone else would glare, no one else who says "Brilliant" when the world has shouted "Piss off". You give me a sense of gravity, pulling me and my boundless, busy mind back to earth when the rest of the world becomes unbearable.

You laughed once because I didn't know the solar system, but I hardly need to when there are entire galaxies in your eyes.

One day, I am going to say it. I'll say those three words against your lips or wrist or the sweet curve of your spine, and perhaps if I'm lucky and the stars in your eyes align just right, you'll say it back.

It is logical to stop now, to pack up my things and leave before my fate is utterly sealed, but for once in my life I find logic lacking. Logic doesn't explain the lick of fire that travels up my spine from your gaze alone, reason doesn't illuminate the insatiable urge to press you to different planes of the wall and kiss the breath from your lungs; cool, detached intelligence does not help me understand why my soul lifts higher at the sight of your warm smile.

And since knowledge is useless, I must return to my most basic impulses: I am an addict so I feed my addiction.

You, John, it is you—beautiful brilliant star in my sky of blackness and monotony— _you_ are my obsession. I crave you, need you. I want you with the purest yearning one can feel.

So, no, I cannot leave. Love has already seeped into my skin and thawed the ice in my veins, it's far too late. Sweet mistress Cocaine has been replaced by an even headier substance, one that is wrapped up in jumpers and strength and endless reserves of patience.

I adore you hopelessly and I can guarantee I will stay, because love has made me its fool, you've made me your addict, and for once in my life, my wild soul has settled into a glowing lull that feels rather like happiness.

I'm hardly adept enough at the moment to tell you what you deserve to hear, those three sparkling words, but the one thing I can tell you, the one thing I mean with the deepest sincerity is that, John Watson, you keep me  _right._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! Reviews would be absolutely lovely <3 Feedback is to me what John is to Sherlock: utterly precious :* 
> 
> Until next time!


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